Housing issues / eviction

Although I cannot provide advice on your specific situation or STATE’s specific laws, I wanted to provide some general information on what options a person may have for getting someone to leave a home that both parties live in. Generally, in most states, a person cannot just “kick out” another person by changing the locks once that person has lived in a location for more than a certain amount of time. However, this amount of time after which a person cannot be “kicked out” varies by state. In some states, if the person is a guest, which means there is no lease agreement and the person did not pay any rent, it may be possible to change the locks if the person was there less than 30 days, for example. However, I don’t know the timeframe that applies for your state and so you would need to talk to a lawyer about that so that you don’t risk committing an illegal eviction. More commonly, a person who wants another person to leave their home may have to get them out with a court order – this court order may come from 1) a judge as part of a housing court/eviction case or 2) if the person who is staying in the home is abusive, the victim of abuse may be able to get an order to exclude the person as part of restraining order due to domestic violence.

However, one thing to note is that sometimes if there are two people on a lease or two owners to a home, one person cannot evict the other person – a leaseholder/owner may be able to evict an occupant or a guest but two tenants or two owners may be seen as having equal rights as each other. Also, it is important to note that there can be consequences for being evicted or sued for eviction (even if the parties settle the matter and an eviction is not actually carried out). It can affect a person’s credit and can harm his/her ability to get another landlord to rent to him/her since landlords may not want to take a tenant who was sued for eviction/evicted. You may want to talk to a landlord/tenant attorney to find out what your rights are in this situation.

Although we do not have eviction information on our website, WomensLaw.org, I did a bit of Internet research to find some information on evictions in STATE - I found this [SEE IF YOU FIND A LEGAL AID GUIDE TO EVICTIONS OR SOMETHING SIMILAR THAT GIVES THE BASICS ON EVICTIONS IN THAT STATE] Please know that we are not affiliated with them and I cannot vouch for the information contained on that site. For specific advice on how to evict someone, you may want to talk to a lawyer who specializes in evictions - here is a link for lawyers:LINK

The second possible way a person may get another person out of their home, as I mentioned above, is due to a restraining order based on domestic violence. I don’t know if this is the situation you are in but I will give you some basic information just in case. If a person qualifies for an order, they may be able to apply for one and ask that the abusive person be removed from the home and that they stay away from the victim. Depending on the facts of the case, a judge will make a decision as to whether this should happen. Here is a link that explains restraining orders [HYPERLINK] in more detail in case this fits your situation. As you will see, there are certain relationship requirements and certain allegations of violence that must be proven to qualify for one.